LAUSR

Abstract The death of family members due to a disaster is often unforeseen, abrupt, and tragic. Those who are grieving and are also patients present themselves to healthcare providers while experiencing the dual challenges of managing their grief and medical conditions. These complexities may create challenging interactions with healthcare providers, particularly if the interactions are imbued with asymmetrical power relations. Yet scant research has examined these issues, especially in post-disaster contexts. This study examines power relations in the interactions between doctors and grieving patients in post-disaster Aceh, Indonesia, using a theoretical approach that draws on subaltern theories as well as a framework from Goodyear-Smith and Buetow(1). Data were drawn from interviews conducted with disaster-affected patients (n = 11), to reveal how the patients perceive their medical encounters. Some patients responded by using pain as generic descriptors, staying silent, or overcoming their challenges. In some cases, some of the doctor-patient interactions produced asymmetrical power relations, while others generated more balanced-power relations, particularly when doctors employed power-sharing strategies. This study highlights the importance of doctors’ awareness and ability to acknowledge asymmetrical power in medical encounters with bereaved disaster-affected patients and a call for doctors to employ power-sharing strategies in medical practices.